HomeMy WebLinkAboutCalled Commission Meeting April 23, 2012
CALLED MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBER
April 23, 2012
Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 12:00 Noon, Monday, April 23,
2012, the Honorable Deke Copenhaver, Mayor, presiding.
PRESENT: Hons. Lockett, Guilfoyle, Mason, Smith, Hatney, Aitken, Johnson, Jackson,
and Bowles, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission.
ABSENT: Hon. Brigham, member of Augusta Richmond County Commission.
Mr. Mayor: I’ll go ahead and call the meeting to order and I’d like to open the meeting
with a moment of silence for Jerry Saul, if we could.
(Moment of silence)
Mr. Mayor: Thank you. Mr. MacKenzie.
1.LEGAL MEETING
A.Pending and potential litigation
B.Real estate
C.Personnel
Mr. MacKenzie: I would entertain a motion to go into a closed meeting to discuss
pending and potential litigation and personnel.
Mr. Smith: Motion made.
Mr. Hatney: Second.
Mr. Mayor: We have a motion and a second. If there’s no further discussion,
commissioners will now vote by the usual sign.
Motion carries 9-0.
Mr. Mayor: We are in legal.
[LEGAL MEETING]
2.Motion to authorize execution of the affidavit of compliance with Georgia’s Open
Meeting Act.
Mr. MacKenzie: I would entertain a motion to execute the closed meeting affidavit.
Mr. Mayor: Can I get a motion to that effect?
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Mr. Jackson: So move.
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. Mayor: We have a motion and second. If there’s no further discussion,
commissioners will now vote by the usual sign of voting.
Motion carries 9-0.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. MacKenzie. Mr. Russell.
Mr. Russell: Yes, Mr. Mayor. There’s an item of personnel that we need to deal with.
As you know over the past several weeks we’ve been investigating an incident in the Recreation
Department. Mr. Shanahan has a synopsis of that investigation that we’d like to share with you.
Mr. Mayor: Mr. Shanahan.
Mr. Shanahan: Yes, sir. Bill Shanahan, Deputy Administrator for the City of Augusta.
Basically what happened, we were informed that a supervisor, who is an exempt employee, had
taken off some comp time after being on catastrophic leave in which she received donated time.
So we took a look at it and the investigation did reveal that this person had taken off four days
comp time and when we looked at the time card, it showed that she had been working four days.
It didn’t show comp time. We spoke with the timekeeper and she briefed us that this did happen
and she briefed us that she had spoken to the Recreation Department Administrator over there
and informed him what had happened. He signed the time card anyway and we took that
information and provided to yourselves, to each of you. That’s basically it.
Mr. Mayor: Okay. Do we have any questions, then?
(No response)
Mr. Mayor: Okay. In the entrance of – I’d like to call on Mr. Beck or his representation
to –
Mr. Beck: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and members of the Commission. Good afternoon. I
appreciate the opportunity to finally be able to come before you today to tell you the truth about
what happened and how it happened in this particular case. I do want to let you know that I have
legal counsel with me today, Mr. Mike Brown, is with me but Mike won’t be talking to you
today. That will be me because today is about you and your vote and me and my career. After
going through these last few weeks and subjected to this kind of public scrutiny and once again,
I’ve had numerous phone calls and visits from friends and family to say why do you want to go
through this. Why don’t you just go ahead and retire and go on out while you have a little time
left to enjoy it and they’ve reminded me of all my accomplishments over my 35 years and that
I’ve got nothing to prove to them about what I’ve done or my reputation. And I almost did that. I
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actually gave Mr. Russell a proposal for potentially your consideration to possibly go out early
and just let it lay there. But after much soul searching and prayer about this situation, my
resignation is off the table because there’s one thing more important to me than any money or
anything else in this world and that’s my integrity. So now why are we here today? I’ve been
accused of fraudulently signing a time card for an employee that showed four days of regular
work hours when in fact the employee did not work. Well, I’m here to tell you today that that’s
absolutely true. Positively, absolutely true. I did sign that time card and that employee did not
work. So why in heaven’s name would I do such a foolish and fraudulent thing and risk my
career, fifteen of which has been your Director? A director in which, in a career in which I’ve
managed tens of millions of your dollars without incident. Never played a free round of golf on
your municipal golf course through all the years we operated it. I’ve paid every time I played.
Never even got a free coca cola from one of our concession stands and never borrowed a piece of
equipment for personal use. Never hired a family member for a summer job. So why in the
world would I want to do something as foolish as that? Well, here’s why. Because the recording
of that kind of time has been standard process for our department for years and years and years.
And that is for exempt employees who are exempt from overtime pay. Being allowed and
granted time off from work for putting in the extra hours and doing the above and beyond things
for this city is not only important but it’s essential for the morale of the workforce. Essential
when you’re out there working these people day in and day out. As a reminder to you, the Fair
Labor Standards Act defines non-exempt employees as being eligible for overtime pay. You
have to pay those employees. Exempt employees are not. You cannot pay them overtime.
Generally exempt employees are supervisory level employees and above but not in all cases such
as our athletic coordinators who run softball tournaments, tennis tournaments. They are a pay
grade 45 making $32,000 a year. They are exempt from any overtime pay. So when did the
practice of giving time off for exempt employees start? Well, I can tell you it’s been at least 35
years. It’s been my whole career working under two other directors for the first 19 of those
years. It’s been a process that we’ve done my whole career. And why is it so prevalent in the
Recreation and Parks Department? Because it’s the nature of what we do. Putting on events
requires mass hours when you’re putting on softball tournaments, tennis tournaments, baseball
tournaments, running special events such as the Tour de Georgia, Ironman, those kinds of events.
It’s the nature of what we do. Putting in mass hours to get the job done. It’s not typical of most
departments and we understand that. Most departments are geared toward 8:30 to 5 generally.
Ours is not and that’s the nature of what we do. We also operate 63 facilities countywide and
there are always things that come up with operating these facilities that are going to be bringing
this kind of overtime situations and response to things like break ins, vandalism, alarms being set
of and all sorts of things in the middle of the night and on weekends and the nights. Those are
the kinds of things that we have to respond to. So what actually happened with this employee?
How did this actually happen? This employee in question was our, is our Operations Manager in
charge of all the park maintenance and facilities for 63 facilities, for 63 parks and is exempt, an
exempt employee. This employee responded to numerous calls like I got through mentioning
over the course of the first few months of 2011, many of which I actually called her to respond
after the Sheriff’s Department would call me, you’ve got a break in at such and such facility.
You’ve got a water break at this facility. These kind of things are happening constantly and so
she built up quite of bit of time over a four or five month period and never had a chance to take
that time off. In June of 2011 this employee went out on medical leave and was out for five
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months. Did not return until the first of December. December 22, this employee asked for time
off to her supervisor and to use these days that she never had a chance or for us to have a chance
to say thank you for working all these additional hours. She asked for that time to be used.
According to her, her supervisor granted that time. She turned in the appropriate internal
paperwork that we use to track these kind of times. She turned it in to them. The employee
takes the time off. Get back to work on January 3, my first order of business that particular work
day was to terminate the employment of this supervisor for totally, for reasons totally outside of
this time card issue. I had no idea this time card issue was even an issue. Had no idea that she’d
even gone out on this kind of time. So this supervisor January 3 is no longer employed with the
city. January 4 the payroll clerk brings this time card in to me and says for these days on this
time card are actually days that she was granted off for exempt employee comp time. I asked the
employee, “What’s the deal?” “I was verbally given approval to take off. If I hadn’t been given
that approval, I never would have taken off.” The employee took those four days off. So after
the fact on this Wednesday I’m handed this time card and I’ve got this issue. I’ve got an
employee telling me one thing and I’ve got a supervisor who’s no longer employed and I
typically don’t make it a habit of calling ex-employees for information. So I sided with the
employee and signed the time card because I knew that she had built this time up. There was no
question about that; she had mass amount of time that she had given to this city. I signed that
time card. Now, why would I sign that time card as regular hours, because that’s what it goes
down as is regular hours and if I could, I’m going to need to use the overhead to give an
illustration about why this time went down in the regular column. Okay. This is an illustration
that may be one of our athletic coordinators who have worked a state softball tournament at
Diamond Lakes Regional Park which we have many of those throughout the course of the year.
Here’s an example. This tournament was held the first week of a pay period and keep in mind a
pay period is based on 75 work hours. This employee works a regular day Monday and then the
tournament starts. Here he is putting in 11 hours on Tuesday, 12, 11.5, 13, he works 55 hours
that first week in getting this softball tournament done for the department. The next week the
employee comes in and works regular hours the first four days of the week and we give the
employee Friday off and it’s not shown on there at all as being at work. That’s standard
procedure because the employee’s total hours, you see the 85 up there, the employee’s total
hours were more than 75. So giving that employee that day off and showing as not even being
here, no problem. That’s standard operating procedure. Okay, the same employee works those
same hours for that tournament. The next week, though, he can’t take a day off. Maybe that
next week is our football and soccer registration, maybe that next week his cohort in the office is
on leave and somebody’s got to be there. He can’t take the week off. So he works the whole
time and we have not had an opportunity to give this employee any time off for working all those
mass hours because of work obligation. So now here’s the example that you need to pay
attention to. This is an example of a pay period in the future after the fact when things slow
down where we can potentially give this employee some time off for giving to this city what they
have. The employee works the regular work week the first week, 37.5, you see that. Comes in
and works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and we want to give him that Friday off.
Well, you see that’s only 30 hours and the total ends up being 67.5. If an employee does not have
75 hours on the books, the employee is shorted 7.5 hours in their paycheck. Now, the only way,
and this comes back at least eight years ago, and who the HR Director and who it was that gave
us the information and how it was told for us to do this, I don’t have a person or anything written
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that says this is what you do but this is what I know we were told to do and how to handle it and
that is for that particular case for that employee, that employee to be shown 7.5 hours so their
total adds up to 75 and keep the internal documents at our office if anything ever comes up about
that employee not being there. That has been the process for years and years and years. It’s not
something that came up just this past December or that came up through this investigation. This
has been our process that we have used. Are we the only department that does this? I will
guarantee you we’re not. Any department director worth his weight is going to give an
employee some time off and has throughout their career. Now how often it comes up is not near
as often as what it is with us because of the nature of what we do but every department has done
this in some form. The question is how they record the time. This is how we were told to record
the time for these situations. That is what happened in this case, gentlemen. Now, Mr. Mayor, if
I could in conclusion, you know, if you all wanted to make a change at the top because you think
it’s just time for a change, you think the Recreation Department needs to go in a different
direction, I’m okay with that. I understand that. It’s part of the nature of what we all understand.
But to terminate me, which I’ve already been given a letter recommending my termination by
Mr. Russell before he had a chance to hear any of this, I’m asking you not to terminate me for
this because this was not a fraudulent case. This was not a case where old Tom stole anything
from this government. This was a case of standard process that we’ve been using for years and
years. If the process is wrong, tell us. If there was another process to have done it better, I
would have gladly have done it. This is the process that we knew how to do and how to record
it. This is what we did for years and years. Thank you for your time, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Hatney.
Mr. Hatney: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have one question. Looking at this card here, on
the top is has hours worked, then it has sick leave, has vacation leave and then it does have comp
time taken but it has nothing in that category. Because up here it says hours worked but down
here it gives a space for comp time and it’s nothing in there in the three cards we looked at.
Mr. Beck: And that’s a great question and I should have brought that out in the
illustration because the comp time category in 2004, the FLSA changed to where non-exempt
employees could be given comp time in lieu of pay. That category of comp taken can only be
used for a non-exempt employee. It cannot be used for an exempt employee that we have in this
case. It cannot. We can’t use that column. We can’t use workers’ comp, it’s not funeral leave,
it’s not vacation and it’s not sick leave and it’s not overtime. There was no column in this time
card for us to record it, so, Rev. Hatney, I’m glad you brought that out because that’s the primary
reason that it’s in the regular category. We could not use any of the other categories. That is
why we could not use that comp taken category for an exempt employee. Only non-exempt and
the employee in question here was an exempt employee.
Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Guilfoyle.
Mr. Guilfoyle: This is for the Administrator. Mr. Administrator, what is your
recommendation?
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Mr. Russell: Based on the evidence and the testimony of the people that were
interviewed, the evidence in front of us, my recommendation would be termination.
Mr. Guilfoyle: I make a motion to terminate with cause.
Mr. Russell: With cause.
Mr. Mayor: We have a motion. Is there a second?
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. Mayor: We have a motion and a second. If there’s no further discussion,
commissioners will now vote by the usual sign.
Mr. Smith votes No.
Motion carries 8-1.
Mr. Mayor: If there’s no further business to come before the body, we stand adjourned.
[MEETING ADJOURNED]
Lena J. Bonner
Clerk of Commission
CERTIFICATION:
I, Lena J. Bonner, Clerk of Commission, hereby certify that the above is a true and correct copy
of the minutes of the Called Meeting of the Augusta Richmond County Commission held on
April 23, 2012.
________________________
Clerk of Commission
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